


just another day at the office

by The3rdTrumpeteer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, everyone else is just mentioned, kind of a brief taako character study i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 00:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18399749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The3rdTrumpeteer/pseuds/The3rdTrumpeteer
Summary: That's what Taako said, that time in Refuge. But he can't possibly feel that way about dying, can he?





	just another day at the office

Dying fucking  _sucks_.

Taako knows he’s supposed to act like he doesn’t care, rag on Merle for his healing abilities, all that shit. He knows he’s supposed to pretend that he’s not bothered by the fact that he’s felt his life drain from his body multiple times, that he’s gotten stabbed and electrocuted and blown up.  ****When asked how he felt in the town of Refuge, the town he and Merle and Magnus failed to save so many times before they finally succeeded, the town that killed them over and over and over and-

Taako just pretended it’s part of the job. Because in a way it is.

Because Taako isn’t supposed to be the one who cares. He’s supposed to be the one who makes jokes about it all, the one who Blinks and disappears in the nick of time, who saves Magnus and Merle’s asses at the last second with his magic. He’s supposed to be the one with an easy smile on his face as he blasts enemies out of existence and ignores everything else that might have happened during those missions. Those missions searching for the relics, fighting the poor people who had been unfortunate enough to find them. Those missions that usually ended in death, one way or another.

And those missions during the Stolen Century, a full one-hundred years of death and pain and so much loss. For a while it was actually easy to ignore those, given that he didn’t remember them.

But it’s hard to ignore the scars. They all have them. Magnus’s are visible on his arms and shoulders and legs and just about everywhere else (not that he didn’t deserve them, always rushing in). Merle’s missing an eye and an arm, for fuck’s sake. And Taako-

Taako tries not to think about his own scars, and not just the physical ones. Not the leg that he’s not sure ever healed correctly after Wonderland, not the burns from the fight with John (they’re not there anymore, of course, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still  _feel_  them sometimes during his night terrors, causing his skin to blister and tighten until he wakes up in a cold sweat), not any of the hundreds of odd cuts and bruises he’s accrued during adventures, though all of those are long since gone, healed by Merle’s gentle, if rough, hands.

He tries not to think of the mental scars, either, because those might just be the most painful of all. Forgetting things, forgetting pieces of his childhood, his original mission, his friends...his  _sister_. Remembering Lup so suddenly after so long, after so many questions he didn’t even know he wanted to ask had been answered, had almost broken Taako that night in the Bureau of Balance headquarters. That night he nearly killed Lucretia for all the shit she had done, everything she had kept from them for _years_. The night he truly stopped caring and it wasn’t just an act.

The night Taako wished that one of those times--so many,  _many_  times--he had just stayed dead.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: @whatamirolling


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